Even in Saudi Arabia, Oscar Piastri is the man of the qualification. The championship leader managed to get his fourth consecutive pole in Jeddah, leaving all his rivals speechless.
The Australian was the only one to go under the wall of 1’41 ” stopping the clock at a time of 1’40”878 and managed to lay the foundations of his pole in the first sector by turning on unapproachable references for the rest of the competition.
Piastri, thanks to the pole, brings home another 4 points that allow him to increase the lead in the standings over Zhou to 40 points and on Sunday he will have his teammate Robert Shwartzman at his side in the front row.
The Russian finally managed to shine on the flying lap and seemed able to blow the pole from Piastri and then pay a gap of only 165 thousandths once he crossed the finish line.
The gaps inflicted by the Prema duo on the rest of the rivals are important. Théo Pourchaire, author of a great qualifying, managed to conquer the third reference but accused a gap of 340 thousandths from the time trial signed by Piastri, while Christian Lundgaard, also the author of a qualifying to applause, completed the second row for the ART Grand Prix with the fourth time in 1’41 ” 297.
Only 5 thousandths of a delay prevented Felipe Drugovich from achieving the fourth fastest time. The Brazilian managed to improve his partials in the final stages of the session and thus obtain the fifth time in 1’41 ” 302.
Drugovich’s progress cost Zhou dearly, however. The Chinese, in fact, managed to improve his partials in all three sectors but was not incisive and closed with a gap of almost half a second from Piastri.
After shining in the morning free practice, Ralph Boschung also performed well in qualifying, hitting the seventh time in 1’41 ” 532. The Swiss seemed to have immediately found a good feeling with the Jeddah track and managed to place himself in the standings ahead of Juri Vips.
The top 10 was completed with Marcus Armstrong ninth and Liam Lawson tenth and the New Zealander himself, fresh from a controversial season finale in DTM, will have the opportunity to start from pole tomorrow in Race 1.
Finally, the good performance provided on his debut by Clement Novalak, twelfth on his debut in F2 with MP Motorsport, should be noted.
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